


It’s My Party

by Meduseld



Category: Hamilton - Miranda, Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Alex has feelings, Gen, Hamilturn, Hercules Mulligan is fun at parties, That's it that's the joke, You could read this as AlexLaurens and BenCaleb if you wanted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-16 05:22:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11247171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meduseld/pseuds/Meduseld
Summary: There’s a new New England tradition. Alexander Hamilton doesn’t get it.





	It’s My Party

**Author's Note:**

> This was a Tumblr joke that got out of hand.

There is always drinking at any military camp, especially around the dawning of the New Year, and at first Hamilton doesn’t think much of it.

Not until he follows Hercules Mulligan into the tent used by some of Tallmadge’s dragoons, the already small space heaving with men. Tallmadge is on the cot that’s been pushed to the center of the room, wearing some kind of bonnet that looks like it may have been liberated from a loyalist lady’s traveling trunk.

A tall dragoon stooped near the doorway, Smith he thinks, follows his gaze and tells him “We was thinking getting him a crown or summat at first, but Brewster said that’d be hippo- hypo- _wrong_ what with us being Continentals ‘n’ all so he went and got that thing outta somewheres”.

He grins, missing teeth, and Hamilton thinks, oh, it’s a birthday then, before remembering that Tallmadge’s birthday is in February.

His Excellency had toasted to it, with excellent port, and Hamilton could still taste it as he wrote dispatches by candlelight afterwards. One of the few easy nights he can remember.

He turns to ask Mulligan about it but he’s launched into some sailor song about mermaids and their sisters with Brewster.

At least, he’s fairly sure it’s Brewster because the man’s beard is gone but he doubts he’d stay away from anything involving Tallmadge as the center piece.

Anyway, no matter who he is, his voice is rather lovely and the song is more amusing than he’d expected. That or the long swigs he’s taken of the bottles of unnamed spirits being passed around have been deeper than he thought.

He loses track of them between one moment and the next, hadn’t known Mulligan knew so many of Tallmadge’s people, who swallow him up while Hamilton is left jostling around the others to get a seat.

They’re closer and more closed than most units and they regard him with a vague air of suspicion.

It makes his skin itch, and he follows a bottle of actually-good-and-therefore-certainly-pilfered-from-one-general-or-another applejack around the room. He brushes past a redhead with a nose that looks like it’s been broken more than once raising a glass because “the major’s awake, boys!” and he doesn’t think much of it.

Then somewhere near the back of the room that one dragoon that’s part Iroquois shouts out “Good to see you out of bed, sir!” and Hamilton jumps, partly because he hadn’t seen the man in the shadows, and partly because his voice booms loud enough to reach Tallmadge’s ears.

The major laughs; “If I had my way, I’d be in it right now” and Brewster seems to appear next to him between one eye blink and the next “Oh no you don’t! Least not ‘til past midnight. It’s the day you woke up and we’re going to drink to it!”

That does strike him odd, and he wonders again if the spirits could have been that strong, to twist the words so strangely.

But everyone lifts what they have on hand, bottles, glasses, mugs, crockery and other improvised vessels, there might even be a boot among them, and toasts to Tallmadge awakening.

In the confusion he stumbles to the side and manages to catch his balance on a finely tailored coat and looks up into Mulligan’s smile. When he asks him, in a roundabout way, if he possibly misheard the speech, his friend confirms that of course he heard correctly, Tallmadge woke up today.

There’s a slight twinkle in his eye, like he wants him to really ask.

It’s not malicious, just gently teasing, but his shoulders tense anyway, dragging down the corners of his lips.

On another night, if it was only them, he might have.

But surrounded by the gentle hostility of other men’s friends and drunker than he meant to be, rubbing his hand on his breeches to ward off feeling the ghost of a bursar’s skin on his knuckles, he doesn’t.

He wraps his fingers around the neck of a bottle that he’s almost sure contains wine and not vinegar and retires.

~

Morning finds him early, the weak winter light piercing his eyes through eyelids that feel thin and dry.

His sleep was shallow and thin with dreams.

Hamilton pulls himself up, feeling like an unsteady stack of dusty ledgers.

The bottle is on the ground by his cot, dropped at some point and more than half spilled, and he’s grateful for the small mercy.

It takes him a moment to get his bearings, looking around the small room like an undiscovered land.

One of his boots near the doorway, the other below the window. The battalion of old, used up quills littering the floor. His blanket bunched up on the end of cot where he’d kicked it off in his sleep, and as he stands, gathering it around his shoulder like a cloak, he can see the half-finished letter to Laurens on his desk.

He’d been writing it the night before, agonizing over every comma, when Mulligan had come and pulled him away from “your damned _gloom_ , man, let’s have some cheer”.

And then the party.

The strangeness of the gathering comes back to him in little waves and he sits on his cot again, insides knotted and unhappy and only half from the drink. The more he thinks about it, the more it feels like there’s a dull knife in him somewhere, twisting.

He’d felt _stupid._

Like a child trailing after the bigger boys and failing to catch them. Desperate to be let in on the joke even if it’s on him.

The anger clears his head out.

He dresses in quick, short movements, and goes out to camp. There’s already an alarming pile of dispatches to be copied and sent, and he mows through them quickly.

It’s soothing, like writing always is, and the work is familiar and mindless in its repetitiveness. He surprises himself when he finishes, staring at the neat stack then down at his ink stained fingers.

All that’s missing is the General’s approval.

~

The camp is dreamlike in the low winter light, silvered with morning mist and unusually sleepy.

It’s oddly comforting, his shoulders unwinding, feeling like he’s walking back from a winter’s ball, and for a moment he can almost smell the Schuyler sisters’ perfume. He’s calm when he walks into His Excellency’s tent, because as lethargic as the rest of the camp is, their commander never rests.

At first, he takes the enquiring look on Washington’s face to be about his swift delivery.

“I woke early, sir” he says and the look grows deeper.

“Hmm. With yesterday being the day Benjamin Tallmadge awoke, I would have assumed you’d rise as late as possible. Unless you did not take part in the festivities?”  

Hamilton feels like he’s swallowed his own tongue, and that’s dangling somewhere near his heart. He can almost taste the blood.

Between the work and the walk he’d dismissed the night’s oddities as a bad joke at worst, and simple alcohol greased confused at best. His Excellency would not join in either scenario.

And from the way his eyebrow is climbing he’s still waiting for a reply. 

“Ah- that is- only briefly, sir.”

Washington holds out the papers with a small smile. “Hopefully not on my account. These dispatches are hardly that important, they could have waited until midday”.

He takes them with a mumble and manages to not quite flee, with legs so unsteady he feels like he’s just off the boat.  

~

It’s more than a week before he finds himself alone with Tallmadge, and in the mood to ask.

He’d half entertained asking Mulligan, but found he couldn’t get the words out.

He’d dismissed asking Brewster out of hand, not that it mattered because he reappeared and disappeared with alarming frequency; another uncomfortable mystery he’s ignoring.

He’s almost managed to put it out of his mind, at least in the daytime.

At night, he turns it over in his mind like a stone.

Until the twilight he leaves His Excellency’s tent to find Tallmadge finishing a conversation with Billy Lee outside. He doesn’t find that odd until he’s walking back towards the aides’ house with Tallmadge by his side, not quite sure how he got there.

He turns to ask, and what comes out of his mouth is: “What happened to your bonnet?”

Tallmadge laughs, fast and warm, his cheeks going red. It reminds him of Laurens.

“I’m afraid it doesn’t comply with regulations”

"There’s a tragedy. Or a petition”

Tallmadge smiles, and he feels too pleased. It would be easier if he weren’t so likeable.

Hamilton has to remind himself that no matter how agreeable his company is, he’s not just a clerk, or whatever else he tells people.

Clerks don’t speak directly to generals, and officers don’t fall silent when they do. They don’t command the fierce respect of dragoons or the use of Sackett’s shed. Whoever he really is, he’s always had the sneaking feeling that Tallmadge sees him as expendable.

It’s not that he doubts that Tallmadge is just as pleased with his company, it’s that he does not doubt that he would expend him the minute he thought it best.

Those facts are hard to remember when he runs a hair over that golden braid and turns earnest blue eyes on him.

"You didn’t stay long, Colonel, that night”. He huffs, reveling in the pride that his absence was noted. “Strange thing to celebrate, Major”.

Tallmadge frowns a little. “I don’t particularly enjoy the fuss, but…I don’t know that I’d call it strange”.

Hamilton’s fingers curl, even if there was a no edge of ridicule to his tone.

He’s fairly certain anyway.

Tallmadge is silent a moment, gazing at him openly. “Forgive me, Colonel, but you are aware what the party commemorated?”

The only thing commendable he can think of in the vicinity of the event is the crossing of the Delaware. He doesn’t realize he’s shot off the words until Tallmadge nods.

“Yes. The boat. You mentioned it and I believed…”

“So you fell and missed the battle, Tallmadge, what of it? Did it take that long for your boots to dry?”

“It took that long for me to wake.”

Hamilton stops. Tallmadge doesn’t sound angry. It comes to nine days. Tallmadge sounds like he’s recalling a funeral.

“It was the cold, the water…I can’t exactly remember it, myself. My last clear memory is shivering on the boat. And _knowing_. Then I waking on the morning of the second day of the New Year”. His shoulders roll uncomfortably, like they’re trying and failing to shrug off a heavy cloak.

He can feel the blood leave his face. _Nine_ days.

“I- No, Major. I did not know. I only heard of your rescuing the cannon and then. Nothing, really” He should apologize. He must. He’d even made a stupid joke and- Tallmadge cuts him off before the words leave his tongue.

“It’s not so much about me. The celebrating, I mean. But Ca-Lieutenant Brewster kept me alive. Kept a vigil. Kept faith. Alone. I can’t begrudge him for wanting a drink, after that”.

They stand in silence a moment, an unspoken plea for apology passing accepted between them.

Finally, Hamilton says “And I suppose no one refused the bottle being passed around”.

Tallmadge smiles, just as warm. “All to ensure my health, of course”.

He laughs, and Hamilton feels his muscles relax. “Knowing him, he’ll be drinking to it when we’re eighty, and he’ll have all of town join in. All the patrons in Strong’s tavern, at least”.

He’s smiling to himself with the last words, pink flowing back to his face. Hamilton is surprised to find himself honored, to be let in on that small, private hope.

He’s never thought about being eighty.

He’s never even thought about being thirty.

Half the time he can hardly believe he’s alive. Believing in the future is impossible.

He swallows down the words. And he says the only thing he can say.

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Even farmers must have thresholds for celebration above your waking up in the morning.”

It’s a beat before Tallmadge snorts. They walk the rest of the way in companionable silence. 

~

That night, squinting at his writing by weak candlelight, because ‘horses’ almost looks like ‘foxes’ and he’s not sure if it’s the ink, penmanship or exhaustion, he lets himself think about being eighty.

Thirty.

About having a drink at that tavern after the war. 

He might take Laurens with him.  

Maybe he’ll even explain the joke first. 

**Author's Note:**

> Ben’s birthday is/was [February 25th](http://www.btdistrict.org/id124.htm), which makes him a Pisces. 
> 
> [Iroquois](http://www.ushistory.org/us/1d.asp) is a historically accurate albeit imprecise term as it is used in reference to a variety of nations including the Mohawk, Oneida, and Seneca peoples. If you get who that particular man is supposed to be, awesome! Also we are both super nerds. 
> 
> The shanty sung is kept deliberately vague because I didn’t find any period appropriate ones that I liked as much as [The Mermaid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz37e_R3OxU); written by Shel Silverstein in the 1960s.
> 
> Lastly, [applejack](https://books.google.fr/books?id=mb0SZIYCXREC&pg=PA10&dq=%22Applejack%22+alcohol&hl=en&ei=d0maTurLJangiAKG5M3EDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result#v=onepage&q=%22Applejack%22%20alcohol&f=false) was a popular colonial beverage; it’s basically apple based brandy. In New Jersey, it was used as to pay road construction crews during the colonial period, so slang for it was expression for was [‘Jersey Lightning’](https://njmonthly.com/articles/eat-drink/jersey-lightning/). Which is hilarious. Also in that article, which is about a family distillery that’s been making it since about 1698, at some point prior to 1760 a young George Washington requested and received their recipe for “cyder spirits” and he still remains the only outsider to secure the family formula.


End file.
